JAMES BUCHANAN

President of the United States

James Buchanan was born near Mercersburg, PA, on April 23, 1791, and was a graduate of Dickinson College. He served ten years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and ten years in the U.S. Senate, was the Minister to Russia and the Minister to Great Britain, and served as Secretary of State under President Polk. He was elected President himself in 1856, and is the only President who never married.

As the 15th President, he took office in 1857 just as the country was splitting apart. Just two days after his inauguration, the Dred Scott decision was handed down by the Supreme Court. It declared that not only was the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, but that slavery was allowed in all federal territories. Although Buchanan was opposed to slavery, he believed that the federal government had no authority to interfere with slavery in any of the states.

During his administration the country, the states, and even the Democratic Party were increasingly divided. After the elections in 1858, the Republicans controlled the House. Nearly every important bill they passed was defeated by the southern block of votes in the Senate. Buchanan did not seem to grasp the enormity of this division, or of the opposing sides unwillingness to compromise. Congress would not approve any of his ideas or recommendations to save the Union, and finally he could only watch as the Union dissolved, his term came to an end, and the next President could deal with the problem. It is this inability to act that has most historians giving him poor marks as President.

During his administration, he had his Summer White House in Pennsylvania at the Bedford Springs Resort in Bedford. It was here that he received the first telegram sent across the Atlantic Ocean on the new Trans-Atlantic Cable. It was sent to Buchanan by England's Queen Victoria. Here also he wrote and had published a statement declining a second term nomination - the first time it had ever happened, and the only time until Lyndon Johnson did it in 1968.

Buchanan was not active in politics after his term ended. He spent most of his time at Wheatland, his home near Lancaster, PA, where he died of rheumatic gout on January 1, 1868.